Ricky Gervais kinda, sorta apologizes about the Golden Globes: 'I hope no one was truly offended.'

Ricky Gervais went on Piers Morgan Tonight to say, “I don’t think I did anything wrong” during the Golden Globes, and that “you’ve got to be true to yourself.” Morgan provided Gervais with a glass of beer and promised, “We’re gonna get low-down and personal.” The result was that Gervais insisted his jokes weren’t any more offensive than “daytime TV jokes.”

Morgan failed to point out that Gervais was talking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, Gervais said, “I’m not sorry for anything I said.” On the other, he said, “I hope no one was truly offended.”

The host also allowed Gervais to get away with a lot of patent hogwash. For instance: “The comedian’s job isn’t to make people laugh, it’s to make people think.” Excuse me while I gag…

It’s becoming apparent that Piers Morgan doesn’t grasp a fundamental principle of being a provocative host, which is to disagree with your guest once in a while. Instead, he was a toady with Gervais, praising him with a mock scold: “You’ve said these bad things about these pampered prima donnas in Hollywood” and referring to any celebrities who may have been offended as “delicate little flowers.” Okay, fine, but what was Gervais left to do except giggle and nod in agreement, which he did entirely too many times?

Instead, the Morgan ego emerged once again: “Until you, I was the most reviled Brit on TV in America,” he said. Oh, come on, Piers; I think Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne still spend a lot of time in America, don’t they?

Once they’d run the Globes controversy into the ground, the rest of the hour bogged down in discussions about belief and atheism, Ricky’s working-class upbringing, and how “Twitter is like evolution among bacteria.” Morgan also treated Gervais’ confirmation that he’ll appear as David Brent on the American version of The Office as a scoop rather than something that’s been reported for days.